Getting Organized

With my new love of coupons, I decided it was time for a coupon organizer. While I was at, I bought one for my money too.  (They were under $4 each at Walmart)

Dave Ramsey promotes the use of envelopes - spending your money on paper first and then setting money aside for those expenses. In an effort to be more efficient than envelopes, I thought a coupon organizer for my budgeted money might work. I did this once before and found myself robbing from Peter to pay Paul or taking clothing money to pay the babysitter, so let's hope that I'm more stringent this time around. I'm quickly discovering all the things that weren't budgeted for. Like party favors for my son's birthday, wanting to buy a tomato plant for our garden and the $30 I had to spend on printer ink. My husband and I were both allotted some "blow" money that is ours to spend how we choose, but it wasn't very fun taking $30 of my blow money to buy computer ink. Hmmmm.....still working out the kinks. Now with my new handy money organizer, our going green project is in effect. My husband got paid on Friday and I took out a big withdrawal from the ATM and then sorted and divided the cash into the various categories.

As for my coupons, it's much nicer having them organized. I watched Collin's video on coupon organizing to help me determine what dividers I would want. I'm missing something for bread...packaged goods? I'm hoping this smaller, accordion organizer will suffice for a while. Collin using a binder and I'm just not sure I want to carry something that big around with me to the store.

Speaking of taking all this with me to the stores - I need a new, bigger purse now more than ever. I found one that would do the job at Wilson Leather when Hip2Save posted about a save they were having, but without being able to see it in person, I just couldn't commit.

Will all this work and be full proof? Obviously not. But I'm open to adjustments.

Our family is going GREEN!

While I do try to reduce, reuse and recycle, that's not the kind of green I'm taking about. I'm taking about paying with Cash. In hopes that our family will do a better job at managing our finances, we're going to buy everything with cash (everything except gas because I'm not getting two small kids out of the car to go inside and pay. I'll leave enough in our account so that I can use my debit card). About a year and half ago, we became debt free thanks to Dave Ramsey's book, The Total Money Makeover. Since then, we haven't been meeting the savings goals we set for ourselves. Dave Ramsey's plan follows The Seven Baby Steps.
Step 1: have a $1,000 emergency fund - CHECK
Step 2: pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball - CHECK
Steps 3 - 7 are all about savings and while our family saves a lot, we've become much more loose with our money now that we're debt free. So, starting with our next paycheck, we'll be spending our money on paper and using cash! Now that I've posted it for the world to see, I'm hoping to stay motivated and to follow through. I did this a couple of years ago when I was working the 2nd step and paying off debt using an old coupon sorter. I often found myself robbing peter to pay paul - taking vet visit savings and using it for sitters, so I'll have to modify my methods. Wish us luck!